Niwot musician Keith Waters releases jazz CD

When jazz musicians have played together for over 50 years, good things happen. Niwot's Keith Waters, a professor of music at the University of Colorado, got together with childhood friend Scott Sawyer to create a new jazz compact disc, titled "Night Songs."

The 10-track CD is scheduled to be officially released on Dec. 16 at Sharp Nine Gallery in Durham, NC, but the disc is already available at Inkberry Books in Niwot, which Waters co-owns with Gene Hawworth, as well as online at Amazon and Bandcamp.

Waters is a jazz pianist who began playing keyboards at 10 years old. His father and brother both influenced him to take up the piano. "There were times in Washington, when we both lived there, that my brother and I performed across the street from each other," Waters said. He began by playing the organ and electric piano, but is now more comfortable playing acoustic piano, including what he described as "a six-figure acoustic piano" in the recording studio.

Sawyer, an accomplished guitarist who still lives in North Carolina, has performed with jazz greats John Abercrombie, Charlie Byrd, David Murray, and Nnenna Freelon, performing on stages such as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Herbst Jazz Festival, St. Lucia Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival, Berlin Chamber Music Hall, and the Blue Note in New York.

Waters and Sawyer met in high school in Greensboro, North Carolina, and discovered their mutual interest in music. "Scott and I have played 50 years together," Waters said. "He's not just a great jazz musician, he's an all-around good person. We have a shared aesthetic, and you might say a musical friendship." He described Sawyer as a "sensitive player, with great phrasing. And he listens well."

Waters and Sawyer each wrote four of the songs on the CD, and also included "Butterfly Dreams" by Stanley Clarke, and "Black Monday" by Andrew Hill. "'Butterfly Dreams' is a jazz waltz, and I've liked it since I was a kid," Waters explained. He also picked Hill's composition for the CD, describing Hill as "an underrated composer."

Collaborating long distance with Sawyer to create the CD wasn't easy. "We would send each other lead sheets with the chords and melody," Waters said. "I wrote three out of my four songs specifically for this project." Two of those songs were composed and named for characters in Shakespeare's last play, "The Tempest." The compositions, entitled "Ariel" and "Caliban," evoke the characters as interpreted by Waters.

Not surprisingly, the last song on the CD, "Caliban," is one of Waters' favorites along with the first song, "Nocturne," composed by Sawyer. "They are free-flowing, conversational," Waters said.

Waters said recording the CD was an interesting challenge, with additional pressure to get it right. "It's like a high-wire act." They recorded the CD in Durham after first performing the songs live in concert on a Saturday night. The duo completed the recording on the following Sunday and Monday with engineer Jason Richmond, who has been nominated for a Grammy. Waters described the recording process as challenging, sometimes requiring multiple takes, but it all came together with Sawyer in the end.

As with most art forms, jazz music can mean different things to different listeners. Hearing the CD for the first time, Niwot resident Susan Warren picked "No Goodbyes," one of Sawyer's compositions, as her favorite.

Both Waters and Sawyer have performed professionally all over the world. Part of the production costs were funded by a Pathways to Jazz grant, a donor-advised fund of the Boulder County Arts Alliance, and additional funding was provided by a grant from the University of Colorado Center for the Humanities and the Arts.